In December 2006, two Nithari village residents reported they knew the location of the remains of children who had gone missing in the previous two years: the municipal water tank behind house D5, Sector-31, Noida.
Initially, some police officers, including Noida SP city, denied any criminal angle, asserted that the families had provided false information about the ages of the missing, and claimed that they weren't minors but instead were adults who left home after fighting with their parents.
[5] Two policemen were suspended on 31 December for failing to take action despite being informed about a number of children missing, as angry residents charged the house of the alleged mastermind, demanding the removal of the Mulayam Singh government.
[6] The situation at Nithari was aggravated as an angry mob of villagers fought with police, then pelting stones at each other, just outside the residence of the accused.
As more body parts were dug up near the premises, hundreds of local residents descended on the spot and alleged that there was an organ trade connection to the grisly killings of young children.
[3] A doctor living close to the Pandher residence, Navin Choudhary, had been under police suspicion a few years prior in connection with an alleged kidney racket at his hospital.
A senior police inspector revealed that there would be a series of searches conducted at Pandher's Ludhiana farmhouse and nearby places.
[11] The torsos of the bodies were missing and the investigating team was looking into possibilities that the killings were motivated by illicit trade in human organs.
Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav said that he would await the report of the committee looking into the issue before making the decision on whether there should be a CBI probe into the matter.
Under the terms of the reference, The panel met the parents of the victims to record their statements even as the police determined that out of the 17 confirmed people killed, 10 were girls.
[10] After pressure and public outcry, the Uttar Pradesh Government suspended two superintendents of police and dismissed six policemen for dereliction of duty.
[17][18] On 17 January 2007 the inquiry committee submitted its reports indicting the Uttar Pradesh Police for "gross negligence" in handling the cases of missing persons.
The committee said that the local administration was negligent and irresponsible while dealing with the missing persons reports and did not rule out organ trade as a possible motive behind the killings.
[19] The two accused in the case were already in police custody while the skeletal remains of the young children were being unearthed from behind and in front of Pandher's residence.
His aide and servant, Surinder Koli was picked up the next day and he confessed to killing the woman and dumping her body behind the house.
The investigating teams seized erotic literature along with a laptop computer connected to a webcam, which immediately raised apprehensions about the presence of an international child pornography racket.
[citation needed] The police initially suspected an organ trade angle as to the motive behind the murders and raided the house of a doctor who lived in the neighbourhood of the primary accused.
[20] The police were, however, cautious with the news reports suggesting the accused committed cannibalism even before the polygraph tests had barely begun.
[21] The accused duo were brought to the Directorate of Forensic Sciences in Gandhinagar city in order to undergo brain mapping and polygraph tests on 4 January 2007[22] and narco analysis five days later.
[27][28] The Central inquiry committee that investigated the serial killings discovered serious lapses on the part of the police in handling the cases of missing persons.
[29][30] The discovery of several polythene bags containing parts of human torsos led the investigators to conclude that it was unlikely that the accused had links to illegal organ trade.
Some liquor bottles, a double-barreled gun, cartridges, mobile phones, photographs, photo albums and a blood-stained grill were handed over to the CBI for extensive examination.
Both the accused Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli were given the death sentence on 13 February 2009, as the case was classified as "rarest of rare".
While Pandher was acquitted, the Allahabad High Court upheld the death sentence for Surinder Koli, his former domestic servant.
The court stopped Koli's hanging at a midnight hearing, saying an inordinate delay in execution was valid grounds for commutation.
[47] On 24 July 2017, both Koli and Pandher were given the death sentence (case #8 out of 16) in the latest hearing by the CBI Court at Ghaziabad.
[48] The court declared: The casual and perfunctory manner in which important aspects of arrest, recovery and confession have been dealt with are most disheartening, to say the least....
It appears to us that the investigation opted for the easy course of implicating a poor servant of the house by demonising him, without taking due care of probing more serious aspects of possible involvement of organised activity of organ trading....
The book offered alternate viewpoints to the case, suggesting that the Noida Police botched the investigation and that Pandher and Koli were innocent; it also discussed the possibility of an organ-trafficking nexus.
[53] The 2011 Indian film Murder 2 by Mohit Suri and starring Emraan Hashmi, Jacqueline Fernandez and Prashant Narayanan was inspired from this case.